Disputes With New Age Proponents Over Physical Ailments
Spaink first came into the national limelight by accusing New Age writers such as Louise Hay, Thorwald Dethlefsen and Bernie Siegel of over-simplifying physical ailments by reducing them to a purely psychological phenomenon. Spaink, herself suffering from multiple sclerosis, was insulted by the suggestion that her disease was nothing more than the result of her own lack of willingness to heal. (Compare Idealism and responsibility assumption with Materialism; see also New Thought Movement.)
Her essay Het strafbare lichaam ("The Penal Body") coined neologisms such as kwakdenken ("quack thinking") and orenmaffia ("mind-Mafia") that even made it into the Dutch language dictionary. The latter term derived from the expression that something is "all between the ears," in other words, "all in the mind."
Read more about this topic: Karin Spaink
Famous quotes containing the words age, physical and/or ailments:
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Self-esteem is as important to our well-being as legs are to a table. It is essential for physical and mental health and for happiness.”
—Louise Hart (20th century)
“For the shoe pinches, even though it fits perfectly.
Apples were made to be gathered, also the whole host of the world’s ailments and troubles.
There is no time like the present for giving in to this temptation.
Tomorrow you’ll weep what of it?”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)